Motorola Z8 mobile phone - a media monster! This is the new Motorola Z8, the media monster that Motorola CEO Ed Zander mentioned last week during his keynote speech at Software 2007.

And for once, it seems that Motorola has delivered. Rather than simply taking their existing phones and "reinventing" them by basically painting them a different colour, Motorola have finally woken up and pimped the Z8 to extreme levels.

So extreme, in fact, it may actually compete with other manufacturers' handsets!

How extreme? Well how does mobile TV, HSDPA, 16 million colour screen and 4GB of on-board storage sound? And that's just for starters!

Motorola Z8 Media Monster phone

Motorola Z8 mobile phone, closed

The Motorola Z8 is designed from the outset to support video playback.

Indeed, such is its feature-set, it can be thought of as a Personal Media Player in the guise of a mobile phone.

To support these claims, Motorola have fitted the Z8 out with the ability to watch or record VGA video at a full 30 frames per second on a 2.2" QVGA screen capable of displaying 16 million colours.

Although the screen isn't the biggest in class (and 2.2" isn't exactly optimum for watching full-length movies on), the ability to play VGA video at 30fps, and the full 16 million colours that the screen can display, certainly puts the Z8 right up there with the best of its multimedia competitors.

Indeed, the whole point of the Z8 is for users to watch mobile TV or full length videos on. To this end, the Z8 supports streaming video over its super-fast HSDPA connection (running at 3.6Mbsp) as well the ability to play feature-length movies that come loaded on 4GB microSD cards.

Motorola are even bundling the Z8 with a complete copy of The Bourne Identity for you to watch, so you can see how good it is at playing movies (and hoping that you like the experience so much, you'll buy more movies on other microSD cards).

Motorola Z8 mobile phone showing camera In addition, the Z8 will let you watch mobile content services from BSkyB directly from the handset, such as Sky’s on-demand library of updating news, entertainment and sports. Sky’s ‘Anytime’ application provides an access point to a range of live mobile TV services that include over 30 TV channels. It'll even allow you to use your mobile phone to program your Sky+ set-top boxes remotely to record programs and place bets through SkyBet (although it has to be said that this is a service offered by BSkyB, and is not exclusive to the Motorola Z8).

As well as movies, the Z8 also comes with a 2 megapixel camera, and is also pretty good at playing music. Not only does it come with an MP3 player, it also has storage for over 1,000 tunes, supports Bluetooth 2.0 streaming via A2DP, and even comes with a pair of MOTOROKR S9 Bluetooth stereo headphones.

All this in what Motorola are calling a 'kick-slide' form factor that's just 15mm thin.

Although none of these features are innovative in their own right, they represent a quantum leap from previous Motorola phones, and shows that Motorola are serious in trying to turn around the company from the loss it posted recently. Let's just hope it works, as if there's one thing that's good for mobile phone lovers, it's healthy competition!

The Motorola Z8 release date is the beginning of June 2007[means released already].


[FROM MOBILE SITE]